All The Pretty Horses
by paradises
Summary: High school's just starting, and the worlds of Octavian and Briarwood are about to converge for the first time; welcome to the world that awaits you, danger everywhere you go — you have been warned / multi-chap; AU
1. prologue

**dnotes** | rewriting chapter 14 of _the defiant ones_. then, i got this idea thing. i was watching a video (the most beautiful tvd video ever, argh; it's called devastation [the vampire diaries] and you should all check it out, :) warning; i write this while crying, so yeah; also i thought that i should finally work with some of the minor clique characters so here is the first chapter;

**all the pretty horses / prologue**

If she was really to go back to the starting point — it would have been in third grade.

Meena's parents had moved her and her older sister, who was going to be starting her senior year of high school; they moved to one of the houses with the beautiful banisters and the butterfly staircases that she could imagine sliding down every morning, with stained glass windows and the best part of all was the fact that she was getting her own room. At the age of seven, that was all that she could ever want.

(If only it could stay that way, forever;

The first day of school didn't go too badly. It was much easier back then, all she had to say was, "Hi, I'm Meena. Do you want to be my friend?" and the other girl, who looked as eccentric as her introduced herself back, with the name of Parin, and Meena could have sworn that she had seen the girl in front of her at one of the JAIN conventions, a temple organization for the younger kids to learn more about their religion.

At lunch time, Parin introduces Meena to a small assembled group of her friends who are sitting near the back of the small elementary school cafeteria, mostly Indian but a Chinese girl with a conniving smile stands out near the end; Meena gets to sit down in the center, because she's the new girl in school and it's all very exciting because she already has friends and she got a gold star in Social Studies, and it's absolutely perfect.

Then the MAPs tests come; they're a standardized test, Parin explains, that every single third through eighth grader (she can't even imagine going to eighth grade, all the way in middle school) has to take and they determine if you go to the gifted classes, which is where all the smart snobs go.

Meena doesn't want to get into the snobby classroom so she barely even tries on the MAPs testing; nevertheless, she scores a 218; Parin asks her after the test, when their teacher, Mrs. Pfieffer — the scary one with the red hair and slight accent; takes them out for a water break, what score that Meena had gotten on the test. Parin's drinking a few sips of ice cold water when she's asking the question, and her words come out muffled. Meena takes a deep breath.

She simply replies, "I got a 218. What about you?" It's a simple question and she's really confused and slightly disgusted, when Parin spits out all of her water.

It turns out that she'll be going to the snobby gifted classes.

It also turns out that Parin was wrong about the Extended English program, that's what they call it. The teacher, Mr. Metcalf is tall and he has a potbelly and at the beginning of each English class, he gives out marshmellows to the kids who get the highest grades on the vocabulary tests.

They're called _incentives_. Meena wants the marshmellows and she's the first girl in the class of four boys to get the marshmellow, and it's worth it.

Parin and the other girls; she learns some of their names and what they're really like — Anjali is the supposed leader of the group who's a little chubby (but Meena still probably weighs the same as her), Hufsah is the girl who's really rude but she's nice to her closer friends, and Hannah Parks is the cello player who's sort of smart and a good friend but more popular then the rest of the group.

Throughout the rest of the third grade, everything seems go to perfectly fine and sometimes Meena makes a few mistakes, but Hufsah becomes her best friend in the whole wide world but by the time that third grade ends, all friendship have to break and Hufsah and Ranjani, one of the other girls who is the twin sister of Hufsah but doesn't even look the slightest bit like her, have to leave to an Indian boarding school and Meena loses her first best friend.

(And it won't be the last;

.

Fourth grade seems as though it will be much better than the third grade and Meena likes to think that she's growing up, and she can't wait to be one of the older children and now she gets to sit near the back of the bus — everything's just so exciting, and she's pure and innocent, and that'll soon change.

Meena stands behind the line for Mrs. McKee, a cheery smile on her face with her hair pulled into two pigtails, wearing a pair of baggy blue shorts that go down to her knees, her hair tied into pigtails that make her look adorable (_childish__) _and a new Aeropostale shirt that's bright pink and has sparkles on the back, glitter shining down, a gift for back to school day shopping that was a good enough to price to buy three sets of!

There's nothing better than that gift, and she still has the tags on with the size Petite Small outlined in glitter pencil or was that glue perhaps, and there's just pure joy coursing through her rainbow (_young_) veins as she stands behind the line, trying to find some of her friends that were supposed to be in the same homeroom as her. Of course, Meena already knew that there were four homeroom teachers for the fourth grade, but apparently Mrs. McKee was the nicest teacher so that was supposed to be a good thing.

Her teacher looks young and has dark brown hair; Meena soon enough meets up with Parin and Anjali who are both in her class, and they start talking about their summer vacations. Of course, like usual, all of her friends who live in bigger homes with nicer parents and more close knit families than her own but that's already to be expected.

Homeroom doesn't start with embarassing (_fun_) activities but this is fourth grade and she's a big girl now, and everything has second meanings.

Gym class is first that day and Meena gets to go with Mrs. Solymossy's class and it's not really that fun and she dreads the day that she's forced to come up to the front of the class and lead all of the different stretches. All of the other girls and boys are raising their hands, both of them, some of the smart ass _(immature_) boys raising both of their legs up in the air in order to get more points, and they choose the game of kickball.

Meena has never been good at any athletics; she's not an athletic person in general and after all she's never played kickball before but it seems generally simple with the objective of kicking a ball and having it land in a certain place but the first time that she kicks the ball it doesn't even budge.

It never will, will it?

.

Fifth grade's different than the previous two years and if there was any year that Meena wishes that she could redo the most, it would be this year.

Fifth grade is the first year where she commits a crime — and her parents will never let her forget about the incident with the money and how online games have been prohibited, not for the first time, but this time Meena doesn't bother about ever bringing up the subject of FooPets again. It just brings back too many horrible memories and tears and it's just not worth it in the end.

Meena has already been biking around the neighborhood with some new friends that she had made over the summer; her best friend in the whole wide world has been replaced and her name is Willa Wu. Willa is a Chinese girl who's three inches shorter than Meena but she's pretty sure that Willa will have a growth spurt soon enough since her parents about six feet for her mother and six feet and four inches for her father, who used to play basketball in China, Willa explains one day when they're biking towards the small park that was just built on the outskirts of the Woods, their community.

Sandra Kennedy, a small Indian girl who looks as though she's practically sticks and bones; but is much more than just what one sees, Meena knows that much from experience; who's running with a volleyball up and down the streets, while some of the boys chase her.

Meena was always one of the last people to understand this concept, this concept of a romance between a boy and a girl before they were married but after all she knew that all that would be in store for her was an arranged marriage. The most that she knew about romance was that Brooke Elias and Johnny (she forgets his last name but he had a pretty face, blond hair, blue eyes) got fake married in the third grade underneath the basketball hoop. And kissed.

When school starts, everything seems to be according to plan and some of her best friends; Parin and Helen Liang are also in her class! Sadly, enough things start off with the idea of assigned seating in alphabetical order and though Parin shares the same last name as Meena has (Shah), she's sitting in a different group as the cut offs were different and Meena's forced to sit next to Jaimin, a boy who's slightly popular but picks his nose when nobody's looking.

He steals her brand new pencil case on the third day of school and replaces it with his, a much older one that was bought for ten dollars less than hers during regristration day at the back to school event. The class's homeroom teacher is a man named Mr. Gorman Ladd who's quite old looking and promises to collapse with a heart attack by the end of the school year.

Things start getting dramatic when friendships change for the worse; Sandra, Liana Fu (another Chinese girl who's quiet and shy, but she's also even louder than Sandra), Willa, and Meena — they were the friendship square that every single person in the entire Barbara Rose Elementary School could rely on for being best friends, forever and forever, until they were on their dying days.

Willa doesn't want to be the person who watches their backpacks every morning while and then Sandra tells Meena to be the person to watch their backpacks, and Willa tells her not to be a spineless worm anymore (it's true, really) so Meena says, no. It's the wrong thing to say; she knows that immediately after the words leave her mouth and their friendship square has already split up into friendship pairs by the end of October.

October's also the month where romance comes into play; or as much romance that can occur in the life of a nine year old (remember, she's skipped a grade).

There's something called Camp Timberlee in which all of the fifth graders go to camp for three days in the second week of this month, which is October, and apparently it's going to be some of the best days of their elementary school career. Meena can't wait until she remembers that no, she's not allowed to go to camp of any sort and then trouble ensues but they settle with a deal with Willa's parents, and soon enough Willa and Meena are the only ones to not go.

It kind of sucks but it's awesome since they go to each other's houses every day, eat boxes of cheese pizza — do you remember the days when you didn't care about everything going straight to your thighs?; watch old swim reruns and some chick flick movies with action, adventure, and mystery and Meena awkwardly squirms away from the kissing scenes, closing her eyes with her hands on top, peeking a little when nobody's looking, and finish some homework packets.

The day that everybody from fifth grade comes back from Timberlee is one of the most interesting days of her fifth grade life.

Helen and Parin, her best friends in the entire world, corner her as soon as they get into their homeroom classroom and speak in hushed voices, each overlapping one another like best friends should. _Aaron Hornback likes you, oh my god Jaimin, and Mark Wu, and Aaron Hornback likes you! _At first, Meena lets out a horse laugh.

People start staring at them because they're not supposed to be laughing on the day of this horrible history test which is first hour for all of the homerooms but at the time Meena was the least concerned about how she performed on her tests, basically because for every single test so far this year she's been getting the highest grade possible, a hundred percent and then Mr. Gorman Ladd tells them to sit down so Meena's head is still spinning.

She sneaks a look at Aaron Hornback and then Mark Wu and then Jaimin who's sitting right next to her and tries her best to believe that all of these facts are lies because lies are much easier to process than this weird truth because she's not even that pretty (_blonde, blue eyed_) at all.

Sure, she's childish

.

Middle school is barely worth talking about.

She meets a boy named Griffin. and falls in love with him without him, or anybody for that matter, knowing about it; aces most of her classes except struggles in math and ends up still in the top 10 for GPA, loses a few friends, and loses all of her personality, becoming a bland robot who only studies and studies and studies because her parents have told her to do so — and Meena has lost her child self, forever.

There's a new person inside of her that just craves attention for her intelligence, because that's what her personality revolves around and of course there's nothing that anybody or herself can do to fix this girl (_stuck up bitch snob)_ but Meena cries herself to sleep, so she still feels. She just feels differently.

And now she's starting high school, and everything will get better.

(It really won't, will it;

.

**tbc (perhaps)**

**a/n: do you guys think that i should continue this? i have a lot of inspiration for it and the chapters are probably going to be around this long except there's going to be only one to two days of high school in every chapter and the pc and the briarwood boys will also be in the high school though it will focus more on the character development of meena and how she finds herself in high school? some middle school flashbacks will be at the beginning of each chapter if i'm going to continue this.**

**please review to let me know!**

**x clara**


	2. one

**a/n: **This chapter is a little more than two thousand words, but it's the first one and I promise that future chapters will be more thorough and actually have dialogue; so, she's going to try out for Math Team, and by the end of the story, she might change, or maybe she won't change at all. Thanks for all the reviews guys, :) No, I am not Indian, but some of my best friends are and they've told me a lot about their cultures&expectations. I'm not going to hold the next chapter hostage for a number of reviews, but please review and I hope that you like this chapter!

—

**all the pretty horses**

.

..

**i  
**_something started crazy_  
_sweet and unknown_

.:.

**writing prompt of the day:** If there was any day that you could take back, which day would it be? Remember to use specific writing examples, and draw from memories and background knowledge.

If there was any day that I could take back, it would be May 3rd, 2013, the day of the finals rounds for the National Spelling Bee, located in Washington D.C., nationally televised and broadcasted. This was my third time at the National Spelling bee, and though perhaps I was one of the younger competitors, my age difference would not matter as eighth grade was the last time in which I could compete, this being the last time was a frightening thought, and chills ran down my slender spine. There were only ten of us left.

It seemed to simple for each of them to be eliminated, one by one, and I was only near the end of the row, just given a little more time.

Nevertheless, though the rules were that words of the same complexity were given on each level, it seemed as though the words were only getting harder and harder, longer and longer, as the eight people in front of me went up to the stage, and spelled their word. Some left the stage with tears running down their faces, while others left with smiles, knowing that they would come back the next year, and perhaps win the prize then: now was not their time.

A select few, three to be exact, remained, coming back to their seats, some sliding down many, and some remaining in the front. The clock was ticking in the far distance and I have the strongest urge to take it down and rip it; its distracting noise almost distracts me from the fact that I am called up to the front.

The dazzling (_blinding) _spotlight centers it focus on me — I've never really liked being the center of attention; and I stand up, legs suddenly shaking but I control myself, knowing the public humiliation for not only myself, but for my parents and younger brother who were sitting on in the front row of the crowd, with the remaining parents of the children who had made it this far, already.

They give me the word, haupia; the sentence comes clearly, and I can see my parents standing in the crowd, praying. How hard could it be?

.

—erm, no.

She's not exactly Pranav Sivakumar, though the fourteen year old does attend her high school, and is in the majority of her classes.

Nevertheless, it seemed as though nobody was going to be reading the assignment and the teacher, a seemingly older version of her sixth grade physics teacher, had assured the class that they would be taking home their college ruled composition notebooks home every day. For the purposes of uniformity, their class hour all had purple notebooks — except for Meena, whose parents had settled for a white one inside, in favor of spending less money on unnecessary expenses (and more for your college funds!). Therefore, it wasn't the first time that she'd been singled out by the teacher, but perhaps one of the first times, when she felt guilty.

A lie wouldn't hurt, now would it?

In a way, it wasn't even Meena's fault; she didn't do anything to deserve these parents who decided that turning on the lights of her bathroom for more than three minutes per day would eventually result in poverty for the family, and they would be tossed out onto the streets. Nevertheless, their whole thought process couldn't make sense to her, as she hadn't been raised from poverty in the streets of India (well, not the streets, but not exactly the royal palace either), but they always used the comparisons about their lives in India.

Meena doodles in the margins of her journals, trying her hardest to look interesting in the discussion about "The Bet" by Anton something, a Russian author who created a story about imprisoning a lawyer for fifteen years, all for a simple bet — but, no! There's somewhere, in all beneath the lavish vocabulary and flowery language, a deeper meaning to the story.

For some reason or another, Meena never really understood the story, not after reading it four times over and over, and she stares at the clock, waiting for the class to be over; that's all she wants. Just another two minutes with having to be called on, and draw attention to herself.

Of course, like most of the children in the gifted&talented programs, Meena loves attention, but only the type that doesn't involve making a fool out of herself, such as giving impromptu speeches and being asked questions in math class about a simple topic that everybody else understands but her; but she doesn't think that it's really her fault for not being able to do the similitude and translations the first time learned.

The bell rings soon enough, and she's one of the last people to pack up their bags but has already organized this sort of systematic way to be the first person out of the classroom, without having to wait for all of the crowds. She could have sworn someone had called her name — nevertheless, it couldn't be anybody important. Willa and Akshara, two of her sort of best friends were already walking in the other direction, sprinting in a sense towards their lockers as Willa had forgotten her gym shoes, and if you didn't bring gym shoes, you would have to wear your normal shoes (hers were high heels) while running them mile, something that nobody with common sense would plan on doing.

And Willa wasn't exactly stupid — after all, she was one of the smartest people that Meena knew; she ducks and swerves between people, making her way down the staircase and nearly tripping in a pool of water before catching herself on the staircase railing, and then walking slower as she continues down the flight of stairs to the second floor, as if nothing had happened in the first place.

Then again, when Meena first made friends with the two of them, both Willa and Akshara, it was the middle of the sixth grade, and she was a completely different person back then, one with emotions and feelings that she didn't try to hide underneath a robotic exterior.

Nevertheless, it made sense that everybody started treated her differently during this awkward transition phase into a person who only cared about education and studying (though she spent most of her "homework" and "studying" time watching television and on Youtube, incognito mode of course, so her parents wouldn't figured out) and she had tried to change herself.

It was too late, however; by the time that eighth grade was half way over, reputations and labels had stuck, whether Meena liked it or not.

She settles on smoothing down her hair, and placing the light white headband — a replacement for a cream one that she had broken last Thursday, when in a rush to get to karate; before walking into the Digital Arts hallway. For some reason or another, Meena can't reason why she's just the little bit annoyed that one of her best friends has already found a new best friend.

It's her fault, though. Nobody wants to be best friends with somebody who only cares about education; those are the type of people that she'll probably get an arranged marriage to, though this wasn't exactly the same thing, now was it? Brushing all thoughts of those nonsensical things out of her head, Meena quickly walks into her Digital Arts classroom, and places down her backpack on the left side, and starts the assignments.

Though Digital Arts was her only class that wasn't an honors or an AP, and would most definitely bring down her grade point average (if she wasn't taking it as a Pass/Fail course — which she was), it was one of the more enjoyable classes of her day. When drawing the frog, as they were today, Meena pulled up the rough sketch, the first layer, that she had started the day before and couldn't help but feel just the slightest bit envious of Amy's drawing, the senior girl who sat next to her, who was perhaps five inches shorter than she was, but was still a lot more popular, and most definitely prettier.

The feet of the frog that Meena had attempted to sketch with the tablet looked like a complete mess once she started zooming out and started focusing on the overall aspects of everything rather than just the small insignificant details that would be worked on the next day, in the third layer. Though today was already the Wednesday of the third week of school (the number of school days into the school year were always something that Meena kept in mind, memorizing it eternally), and takes a deep breath.

It takes her at least five tries and there looks over her shoulders before anybody would start suspecting something before Meena cheats.

Obviously, it's not the first time that she cheats, and in a way, it's not really official cheating either, but it involves tracing the foot of the frog, and transferring the second layer from one of the screens to the other screen, and then airbrushing and using a smaller opacity of an eraser to make it lighter before outlining it for the first time, for the first real time, with the mouse and then a light layer with the tablet and the pencil; and, repeat.

After completing this process around seven times, the bell rings, and she's dismissed to French; it's one of the classes that she's actually interested in.

On the other hand, chemistry couldn't come soon enough; she storms into the classroom three minutes after the bell, profusely apologizing and sitting down in her seat, all eyes on her, not for the first time of that day. Mrs. Calhoun, the chemistry teacher, collects their pre-lab sheets, and assigns lab partners.

"Vivian and Kevin," she begins, pulling names out of the girls' and boys' hat as though they are in kindergarten, and both the girls and boys who are opposite genders, quite obviously, squirm away from one another at the lab stations as if third grade is the current one, instead of ninth and tenth, and cooties must be avoided, at all costs. Mrs. Calhoun sighs before pulling out the next names, "Meena and," _Please don't be a guy, _"—Pranav."

Meena decides that fate, and all of the supernatural and godly powers that her parents so deeply believe in are horrible people, who don't care about her. At all. She takes a deep breath, and walks towards one of the back tables, "Hi, I'm Meena." She doesn't bother shaking his hand, instead lighting the match.

Behind her back, Vivian — her best friend, mouths, _You two would be cute together! _And, she wishes that she wasn't so good of a lip reader. She's just so careless so Meena accidentally burns her hand with the flame, and later remembers that sticking her hand into the flame of an iodine solution that's being sort of dipped into the Bunsen Burner's orange blue flame isn't the smartest of things to do.

Pranav starts freaking out and it doesn't really hurt that badly, so Meena tries to ignore the pain and then the two of them get into this small argument about whether she should tell the teacher or not and;

This was just the beginning — and their lives were going to change after this, for the better or the worse, Meena wasn't sure.

**.**

**.**

**.**

**tbc.**

**.**

please leave a review, :)


	3. two

**all the pretty horses**

.

..

**ii  
**_something that you keep_  
_on a box, in a street_

.:.

Take a moment in time — perhaps, any moment. Nothing specific; it could be something important like the first time that you had a heartbreak, watching the blood spill down your shoulders as you tried to numb out the pain, rose tarts and cinnamon shoveled down empty throat, lumping in the thighs that are, for the most time exposed, or even something like the first time you felt failure, not a single clap resulting in the audience of a piano recital, at the age of seven and a half. Meena decides to actually think for a moment, knowing that this English assignment will be graded, knowing that her teacher, the one that her parents declared to be one of the most cunning, at least throughout the town.

She decides to take the most significant moment, at least during the past few days, which is probably going to be that horrible badminton class at Xilin Northwest Academy, a Chinese school which consists of mostly Chinese children and their adorable two year old siblings who are somehow violin prodigies, a few random Americans who have light enough skin to pass as half-Asians, and then there's about two or three Indians; Meena's one of them.

There's a specific moment — when a teenage girl, quite ugly in fact, loses her last Indian friend, a girl whose name that she keeps on forgetting, but still. It starts off at the beginning of the badminton class, even before the teacher shows up. First, Kaylin shows up, who's Vivian's best friend ( and Vivian? Well, she's complicated. She used to be Meena's second best friend and a complete bitch, but still ), and Meena awkwardly mutters a "Hi, Kaylin" to her, but it's an awkward "Hi, Kaylin", so does it even really count? She's not really sure of anything right now.

Then, horribly enough, speak of the devil and she appears, Vivian shows up and says, "Hi, Meena" before realizing that she's supposed to be ignoring her, or shunning in Vivian-terms. Meena's so shocked that she can barely say anything, squeaking out a "Hey, Vivian" only minutes after.

The expression on her face is one of full glee, because this probably means that Vivian's forgiven her, even though she's not really sure what she did wrong in the first place, but she just wishes that everything could be the way it had been on the first day of school, when Vivian and her were the best of friends, and all the boys would ask them out ( of course, Meena had to say no, but the attention was nice ), and everything was perfect. And then, Meena just had to go ruin it all by getting a bad math test grade on extended material, and then lying about her grade to one person.

She had told everybody else about the fifty nine percent, even the people that she didn't want to tell, but she had just told one person, by the name of Helen Liang, that she had gotten a sixty four percent, but had a ninety percent in the class after homework and extra credit ( total lie ), and her parents thought that she had gotten a ninety one percent. Of course, even that wasn't acceptable to them.

Nobody knew how Meena felt, but then the four of them — Jackie, a Chinese sophomore who went to Barrington High School, the same one as Vivian and Meena, Joyce, one of Kaylin's friend in BMS Campus, Prairie Middle School, Vivian, and Kaylin; started playing a game of badminton, and started completely ignoring Meena, and then she knew that Vivian had forgotten that she was supposed to be ignoring her. It still hurt, though; even though Meena knew that she had been doing something wrong, she just wished that she could take back what had happened. She couldn't though. Not now, not ever.

.

Life moves on quickly enough; though, things start to change on a Monday. Meena walks down an almost abandoned street in the middle of Naperville, a city about one hour from where she lives, and rings the doorbell of one of the smaller houses, a smile on her face as she carries a posterboard in one hand, and her cellphone along with other necessary materials, in the other.

"What do you want, bitch?" The door's opened by none other than Vivian, not exactly the person that Meena was hoping to see, but Meena walks in — striding confidently, and probably in a way that makes her look really lame and stupid, but nevertheless, she's forced to leave exactly two minutes later; because Vivian can't seem to forgive Meena for a mistake that she can't even remember making.

But, time passes by, and suddenly they're friends again. It's been two years now, and it's on and off;

She's sitting alone, like usual, in a lunch table, doodling a weird three dimensional square onto her assignment notebook, under the pretense of memorizing vocabulary words and trignometric identities, when a shadow looms upon her table, but she continues doodling, hoping that the three girls standing in front of her will take the message, and move on. Perhaps, if it was a few months ago, Meena would have gasped, and immediatly stopped whatever she was doing, focusing her utmost attention upon the queens of the school, and she's still the same deep down.

Nevertheless, Meena's gotten better at hiding her emotions, and closes her assignment notebook, saying politely, "Can I help you?"

The two girls step back for a moment, revealing their inner queen, who produces a traditional fake smirk, "I think that you can, little girl," Alicia speaks with a menacing voice, oddly charismatic. "I've heard that you get good grades in AP Physics—"

"_The best _grades," Meena corrects; Alicia stares at her for a moment in confusion, as if there's no real difference between being the best and being average, but then again, Meena doesn't expect girls who make their lives revolve boys and drama and relationships along with longing for more and more power, as if they're all living in _Lord of the Flies_ to understand anything about perfection. She motions with her hand, "But, continue."

"And if you don't know," Alicia bites her lip, but immediately recovers and puts on a pretense of confidence, "That I'm not doing so well in AP Physics, so maybe if you help me for a few weeks, you can temporarily become part of the Inner Circle."

So, like any other person with somewhat rational sense of high school popularity and how much it means to one's social standing, she replies, "I don't think so. It's kind of stupid, if you think about — just like you." She's about to leave, when Alicia stops her, and Meena only stops because the other two members of the so called pretty committee are flanking Alicia, and have their boytoy bodyguards standing right behind them.

There's a moment where Meena ponders the decision and finally accepts — after all, though this isn't exactly one of those golden opportunities, it wasn't likely that someone like Alicia Rivera wouldn't be able to bribe a teacher another time; because in Westchester, no teacher was going to give students grades based on merits; and it'll only happen once. After all, her grades are flawless, all of her extracurriculars are going better than they should be, and a little challenge?

It's not something that someone like Meena would think of turning down.

.

The first pro that she hadn't thought of comes in the middle of chemistry; it's near the end of the day, and one of those classes that she's not doing particularly well in, and besides Vivian ( who's currently in a shunning mood ), Meena doesn't exactly have any friends, which she's dreading for the end of the year, when one picks their own lab partners; a warm breeze blows in from the window, and her paper blows away onto the floor.

Vivian, who sits right behind her in their new assigned seats, smiles, "Here's your paper, Meena," in an almost sickly sweet tone, and "accidentally" drops her Starbucks latte onto the paper, and passes it forward, along with all of the other homework.

A strange liquid is splashed onto her back, only moments later, and Meena winces slightly, but doesn't show enough distaste in order to get a reaction; after all, isn't what Vivian wants? A reaction? She's not going to give Vivian the satisfaction, and brushes her hair in front of her shoulders before realizing that her hair is falling off. In clumps, onto her paper, and people start staring, and Meena looks back at Vivian, and she remembers a television show marathon of gossip girl and the idea of NAIR, and excuses herself to the bathroom, in tears.

She didn't think that Vivian would go this far; sure, the girl's done something horrible things in the past, but never something as destructive; and then, Meena starts to believe that she deserves it, because she was never the best friend. Running down the hallway, she crashes into an empty stall, and lets everything go in an instant.

Meena stares at a haunted reflection of a mirror, examining the broken cracks that run down their sides; tears run down her worn cheeks — but they're beyond worn by now, cracks forming and crumbling under a pretense of just a little too much confidence and tranquility. Meena paces back and forth frantically, before touching the back of her air and feeling pieces of it falling out in her hands, until her head is practically bald, and there's hair and a little blood on the floor, and she's feeling sort of faint, and collapses upon the floor.

The next time that she wakes up, an opaque glow of white surrounds Meena as she rubs her eyes, almost in a manner annoyed, muttering, "Where am I?" Then, the answer's obvious as a door opens and a few "white coats" walk into the room, interns, no doubt; maybe, residents?

"Have you been taking any drugs, lately?" The first intern, a stupid looking individual who scratches his head — full of hair; one earphone in a right ear, the other dangling upon the floor. Obviously, not a professional, Meena thinks to herself as she sighs, taking a deep breath in order to stop getting annoyed. After all, she's had enough triggers for one day.

Meena shrugs, "Yeah, sure. I've been taking some marijuana and smoking some pot after school with my junkies, and then I do some graffiti on the back of the high school—" It's all a joke, but the intern is recording every word she says. "God, no. Look at me. I'm a stereotypical Asian, and I've never done anything that my parents haven't told me to do, okay?"

The intern takes a deep breath, obviously irritated, almost like her parents in a way. "Ms. Patel, you've been in an accident; do you remember anything?" She shakes her head, obviously knowing that there was no accident. "You were in a car crash, in a limo, actually. Do the names Alicia Rivera and Claire Lyons ring a bell? Maybe Derrick Harrington or Joshua Hotz? Cameron Fisher?"

Meena nods, slowly, trying her best not to laugh, because this all must have been a joke. It has to be, right? "I'm sorry; did Vivian bribe you do to make up this forgery? Because, this is absolutely ridiculous; are my friends outside?" At least Heather, maybe Layne, should be here. They owe it to her.

But then, the door is opened and Meena's enveloped in a group hug with people that she barely even knows, and immediately comes to the conclusion that something's seriously wrong. Therefore, she screams.

**notes |** for the updating challenge, (: did you see that coming?

i'm feeling a little messed up right now since my day went horribly and then i have to go to this concert now so i can't stay on ffn but hope you guys like this; how're you guys? really — how are you guys, doing? so, basically; to sum the end up and make it less confusing, she was in a car crash, and there's a lapse in time, about one year between that instance and the car crash, and now she wakes up in the hospital a year after the bathroom scene and can't remember anything of the past year.


End file.
